


Kids These Days

by SaintDeanThomas



Category: Avengers Academy (Comics), Marvel (Comics), Runaways (Comics), Young Avengers (Comics)
Genre: Friendship, Reunion, Team Building, Verbal Sparring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-14
Updated: 2017-10-14
Packaged: 2019-01-17 10:45:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12364011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaintDeanThomas/pseuds/SaintDeanThomas
Summary: A Runaways/Young Avengers fanfic to celebrate Gert's return to the 616. The Runaways need a favor and who better to turn to than the few Avengers that they actually trust.





	Kids These Days

This was not what Billy was expecting at all. When Nico called him and asked him to pull some Avengers strings to pull a kid from foster care and meet them in a place with no witnesses, that raised more than a few red flags, but she’d sounded desperate. If it were anyone else, he’d had waved off the request, but when she explained her situation Billy and Teddy were more than happy to help. More than that, her idea had inspired them to set up a meeting of their own.

“You sure this is a good idea,” Kate had asked, taking aim at a nearby cactus and knocking off a flower, “for all we know this is a HYDRA set up… or Skrulls, they’ve been pretty quiet recently, no offense Teddy.”

“None taken.”

“Guys, c’mon,” Cassie said, adjusting her position between the three of them, ecstatic at the idea of everyone coming together again, “this is a good thing, getting the band back together! Plus if it is a set up, I mean… look who they’re messing with, we’re the Young Avengers-”

“Pretty sure we’re just 'Avengers' at this point, Cass.”

Waving Kate's comment off, Cassie rolled her eyes. “Yeah but that doesn’t have the same charm to it, Kate. Especially since the Avengers have been doing...not so great recently.”

“She’s got a point,” Teddy added, “I mean, I’m pretty sure we’re on hero vs hero conflict eight at this point, I think the Avengers are going to war over who ate the last bagel as we speak.”

“To be fair, I hear Spider-Man does hog the cream cheese.”

Turning at the new voice, Billy, Teddy, Kate and Cassie were greeted by the Tommy and Eli standing together with Klara Prast under the shade of an overhang.

“Eli! Tommy!” Overcome with joy, Cassie grew to the point where she could sweep them up in her arms, squeezing Klara between the two of them as she hugged her long absent friends. “I’ve missed you guys! How are you.”

“Suffocating...please drop us, Cass, I’m too young to die like this.”

“Oh, sorry!”

“It’s cool,” Tommy said, stretching himself out with a smile after his big squeeze, “love the energy, love the new costume too. Hey, Eli, think we should get an upgrade too?”

Ignoring Tommy's high energy hellos as he continued his greetings, Eli walked with Klara over to Billy and Teddy. “Brought you guys a gift, express delivery. It’s been awhile boys, staying out of trouble I hope?”

He was trying to sound casual, but the three of them had been friends long enough that they could tell he was more excited to be back in their company than he’d ever admit. Fortunately for him, the couple were kind enough to grant him the facade of seriousness in the situation, especially considering he’d gone through the trouble of even showing up in his costume for the situation.

“As much as we can, you know; fighting nazis, dealing with interdimensional crisis, Teddy became king of space… the usual. Appreciate you meeting up with us on such short notice, hope you guys didn’t run into too much trouble in the busy state of Arizona.”

Watching as the corner of Eli’s mouth twitched up, the mask of seriousness cracked just enough for them to notice. “That’s a smile, you smiled,” Tommy said, having crept up behind them and harping on the moment, “everyone group up! He smiled, that means we’re back in action!”

From there the conversation lost any stiffness and devolved into the fluid chatter of old friends catching up, with only Klara remaining relatively quiet, though apparently engrossed in the friendly atmosphere regardless as she clung to Eli’s side and explained that her foster family in Arizona were actually relatively close to the Bradleys. When they’d been wrapped in conversation for a while, forgetting any purpose other than their reconnection, a loud thud in the distance roused them out of their casual mood, each of them taking up a defensive position in response to the new stimuli.

Upon spotting the large silhouette of a frog a few yards out, Billy smiled and reminded them all why they’d been gathered there in the first place. “C’mon” he said, leading them closer to where the Leapfrog had landed, “like Cassie said; we’re getting the band back together.”

Stepping through the dust that their landing had kicked up, Nico waited as Karolina, Molly and Chase joined her outside and the figures in the distance grew closer.

“You couldn’t have gotten us a little closer, Chase?”

“Relax, oh fearless leader,” he said, adjusting his prototype Mark III Fistigons in case things went sour, “we did a quick overhead scan to make sure they were legit but better safe than sorry, right?”

“I can’t believe I’ve reached this point in my life,” Karolina said with a sigh, “but I agree with Chase on this, we’ve seen the kind of messes the Avengers get into when you leave them alone for more than five minutes.”

“It’s why the X-Men are so much cooler,” Molly cut in, stretching out in the warm desert sun.

Before she could offer a rebuttal about time travel and frequent trips to hell, a high pitched gasp cut through the air. Turning as a unit, the four of them were rushed by an excited Klara with tears in her eyes, working her arms as best as possible to encompass them all in a hug. “Nico! Chase! Molly! Karolina! I’ve missed you all so much! Please don’t leave me again!”

Suddenly overcome with emotion, Nico dropped to her knees to better hold her former charge. “Never again…” she whispered, determined not to cry from joy as the others grouped up on them with various welcomes and excited cries.

“See, why couldn’t we ever get a group hug like that going?”

For a moment, Nico forgot that they Young Avengers were the ones who brought Klara home, her brain flipping into an automatic survival mode that had kept them alive when they were on the run. Luckily, she quickly recomposed herself before anything violent happened, a lesson she’d learned from She-Hulk during her time with A-Force.

“Thank you,” she began, rising to meet their eyes in front of her newly reformed family, “seriously, this was a lot easier than the smash and grab way we normally do things.”

“No problem,” Billy said, Eli, him and Kate watching as the two groups began mingling for the first time in what felt like forever, “to be honest I should be thanking you, it’s been way too long since we’ve all been together-”

An explosion suddenly rocked the valley, and when everyone turned their attention to the large rock that had been a few feet away not long ago they saw Tommy bowing to the applause of  Molly and Klara, a refresher for old times sake.

“-though in some cases it was probably for the best.” Kate noted.

Just as they began catching up, Eli caught a glimmer of motion coming from the Leapfrog. Figuring it to be Xavin but still being cautious, he was surprised when Old Lace stepped into view with a purple haired girl attached to her side, each one fighting to be first out the door.

Much to the dinosaur’s protest, the girl was obviously winning whatever argument was occurring. “You can’t just keep me cooped up and call it protection,” Gert growled as Old Lace tried circling around her again, “I have my rights you- whoa.”

Stunned at being the sudden center of everyone’s attention, Gert found herself staring at the assembled parties with a certain amount of calculation placed on the faces she didn’t recognize.

“...Xavin?”

It was Teddy’s best guess given the gaps in his information, but a quick look at Karolina quickly told him that he’d guessed incorrectly.  “Okay…” he said, a twinge of guilt over her expression rearing its head, “not Xavin.”

“No but good guess….um, Hulk-guy?”

“Hulk-guy?” Teddy and Kate said in unison.

“No, okay, screw it then,” Gert said, finally convincing Old Lace she was in no present danger,  “Nico, introductions please, I swear this is your sixth birthday all over again, everyone's having fun and I’m the odd woman out.”

“Right,” Nico said, hooking her arm around Gert’s, “Young Avengers -and Klara- meet Gert. Gert, meet the, uh, Young? Avengers... and Klara, she’s ours. That’s Hawkeye, Stature, Speed, Wiccan, Hulkling, and Patriot.”

“There’s a lot to choose from in that sentence to make fun of but I’m just wowed you guys are buddies with a group that seriously called themselves the Young Avengers, so what are they all the avengers kids or something.”

“No,” Kate and Eli said together.

“Sort of,” Billy said, with Tommy making vague motions with his hands.

“We are” Cassie said, pointing between Teddy and herself in solidarity, “our dad’s were Avengers.”

“The hulk had a kid?!” Gert was more disturbed by that than almost anything else to this point.

“No, well... yes, but I’m not him. My dad was Captain Marvel, the first one,” Teddy began, explaining before further confusion could occur, “her dad is Ant-Man, the second one. His grandfather was the black Captain America, their mom is kind of...sort of the Scarlet Witch and Hawkeye, she’s trained under Hawkeye and good in a fight.”

“My parents were evil time travelers and yet my head still hurts at the idea of multiple Avengers reproducing on any level. I don’t suppose you’ve got an Iron Lad stashed away somewhere to complete the set?”

“We did,” Eli began, staring her directly in the eyes as if sensing a challenge approaching.

“I swear that was sarcasm," Gert said,  patting Old Lace as she  cocked her head in confusion, "but maybe he can help us fix our _own_ robot boy, I mean it’s only fair: Avengers got him broken so you help us put him back together. So, where is the mini tin-man? Wait, let me guess... you guys  did your whole Avenger thing and now he’s off the team”

A sharp hiss from Billy and Kate signaled to Nico that things were about to get very uncomfortable, very fast.

“If by ‘our Avenger thing’ you mean trying to save people then yeah, you could say that,” Eli said, turning defensive, “say, how familiar are you with evil time travelers again? We could compare notes on what happens when they screw up.”

“More familiar than I’d care to be if I’m being honest,” Gert began, not backing down from Eli’s challenge, “but if there’s one thing I know to be timeless it’s caped incompetence, Nico filled me in on those Civil Wars your big-shot buddies keep starting up, real great management you guys got going on there for it to happen not once, but twice! Oh yeah, and good going with that X-Men situation too, glad to see you’re it’s not just yourselves you can’t handle.”

Most people would back down from an angry recently deceased woman with a psychic dinosaur at this point, which was what Gert and the other Runaways were counting on to diffuse the scenario. Unfortunately, the Young Avengers knew Eli better than that, and in a situation with his principles being challenged, he wasn’t going down easy.

“Um, should we stop this?” Karolina said, the tension of the situation causing the remaining members of each group to huddle together.

“Nah,” Tommy said, sweating through his goggles, “I’m not sure if it’s the same for this Gert chick but I think conflict is how Eli makes friends.”

“That’s…” Chase paused for a moment to think, “eerily similar to how she makes friends, yes.”

“The Avengers aren’t perfect but are you really in a position to talk about team management? Where were you when the X-Men were dealing with that evil version of Molly from the future a while back? Or how about that Wilder guy Luke and Danny have been dealing with, shouldn’t you guys have been all over that? I haven’t seen Xavin in a while either, don’t suppose you guys ever followed up with them either. You think the Avengers are some corporate machine churning out disasters but you guys aren’t exactly the model of unity right now.”

Just then, Old Lace let out a noise of confusion, alerting the both of them to the Leapfrogs blinking lights before it belted out the words: zzzt INCOMING MESSAGE FROM MASTER CHASE

“We figured you could be going at this for a while so Teddy convinced us all to go bowling. Don’t move the Frog, but give Billy a call when you’re done, he will teleport you. And Gert, Nico asks you to not make Old Lace eat the cute one, her words not mine.”

With the immediate tension diffused, the two found themselves laughing at the absurdity of a giant frog essentially putting them in time out.

“Unbelievable,” Eli said, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand, “one day back and I get ditched by my team for starting a fight.”

Shaking her head Gert found herself more relaxed than she’d been since arriving in the present “They brought me back from the dead just to leave me with a stranger in a hot ass desert. Honestly if they can’t handle a little impromptu conflict what was the point of even saving me.”

“Truce?”

“For now,” she said, accepting a handshake in solidarity, “I still have some issues I need to take out on an Avenger, I’m working on a list so you haven’t heard the last of me.”

“Believe me, I could fill a notebook with complaints, but you know how it is, love it or hate it it’s the world we live in, might as well fight for it, regardless of the idiots currently in charge of saving it or running it.”

“I can respect that, besides, Nico made it very clear that you were off Old Lace’s menu, and I suppose she could do worse than a super soldier.”

“I appreciate that, now let’s go, you’re on my team, if nothing else I could use the intimidation factor.”


End file.
